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Major NSF Equipment Grant Assists Multiple Departments

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A major grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) is enabling Hope College
to purchase equipment that will support research in multiple departments in the natural
and physical sciences.

The college has received $215,180 through the NSF's Major Research Instrumentation
program for a scanning electron microscope and a chemical autoanalyzer. Faculty in
biology, chemistry and physics worked together in seeking the grant with research
projects already lined up for the new equipment, with additional uses for teaching
and research by other programs envisioned. The instruments should arrive by the end
of the spring semester.

"This really has been an interdisciplinary effort," said Dr. Graham Peaslee, who is
one of three faculty coordinating the project and is a professor and chairperson of
chemistry and a professor of geology/environmental science. "These instruments will
help generations of students here."

According to Peaslee, the scanning electron microscope has been the ultimate instrument
for microscopic examination of materials, capable of magnifying objects up to 30,000
times their size and performing an elemental analysis of its composition at the same
time, allowing the instrument to be valuable for surface characterization studies
of all sorts of materials in geology, environmental science, chemistry, physics, material
science and biology. He noted that every discipline needs to know more about what
is happening at the most microscopic levels of their solid samples.

The continuous-flow analysis autoanalyzer is a complementary instrument that will
allow for the rapid chemical analysis of large numbers of aqueous samples. It will
be used to test for nutrient levels in surface water samples, as well as chemical
concentrations in different plants and animals, which again makes it a versatile interdisciplinary
instrument.

In addition to Peaslee, the grant's co-authors are Dr. K. Gregory Murray, professor
of biology, and Dr. Stephen Remillard, assistant professor of physics. All three
will be using the new instrumentation in on-going research projects being conducted
collaboratively with Hope students.

Murray will be using the autoanalyzer to examine the nutritional characteristics of
tropical cloud forest fruits, part of his continuing investigation into the interactions
of fruit-eating birds and their food plants at Monteverde, Costa Rica. He will be
studying the correspondence between energy-intensive stages in the life-histories
of birds--for example, nesting and migration--and the nutritional composition of fruits
available over the year. Fruit-eating birds in the temperate zone time their migration
to coincide with the peak availability of fruits, but such data are unavailable for
tropical forests, where an even greater proportion of birds feed on fruits. He notes
that the new information will add to the understanding of the complex interactions
upon which tropical ecosystems depend and perhaps allow predictions of how the interactions
might be altered by climate change. Murray is also planning to use the instrument
in a collaborative project with scientists at 18 other institutions on the impacts
of invasive plant species on rates of leaf decomposition and nutrient cycling over
much of the eastern and midwestern U.S.

Peaslee will use both the scanning electron microscope and the autoanalyzer in his
continuing study of the Lake Macatawa Watershed, seeking to provide data to assist
in efforts to remediate the watershed, especially by reducing phosphorous contamination.
His project will focus on determining the origins of polluted sediments in the lake
that are currently considered as coming from "non-point" sources. The new instruments,
he said, will be able to identify qualities that will allow researchers to specify
where within the watershed the materials originated, the better to enable steps to
be taken to prevent such run-off. He hopes to develop a model that researchers concerned
with other watersheds can also use.

Remillard will be using the scanning electron microscope to study superconducting
components that have been manufactured by companies that develop superconducting electronics
for wireless telecommunications. One goal is to reveal the quality of the fabrication
of the materials used in the components so that the researchers can assess the relationship
between the quality and how well the materials perform.

The NSF grant for the scanning electron microscope and autoanalyzer has been funded
through the federal economic stimulus package, the "American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act" (ARRA) of 2009.

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